Bad news for the new batch of Trekkies today, as Paramount and J.J. Abrams are close to announcing that the sequel to 2009’s blockbuster Star Trek will be pushed back another 6 months from June 29th, 2012 to a Holiday 2012 release. Deadline has the details.

This comes after Paramount pushed back the other franchise film in its arsenal that has Chris Pine as its star. Pine’s also playing Jack Ryan in the reboot of the Tom Clancy-created series. Pine was expected to shoot that film first, but the script wasn’t ready. Paramount hired David Koepp to rewrite Adam Cozad’s script. Koepp just began writing this week after completing his film Premium Rush.

Why is Star Trek in such precarious shape, just 13 months before its release date? The film has three top-flight writers in Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. Like Abrams, all of them have been busy on other films. Kurtzman directed Welcome to People. Orci has been busy on Cowboys & Aliens and in prepping the Gavin Hood-directed sci-fi epic Ender’s Game.

Lindelof has been busy working on Prometheus, the Ridley Scott film for Fox that was conceived as a 3D prequel until Lindelof came on to do a rewrite and changed the concept so much that they consider it an original. The result? It doesn’t sound like they are close to having a script that will live up to the high quality of the first film that revived a dead franchise. On the Trekkie fan site Trekmovie.com, Orci confessed this week that they have a 70-page outline, and are waiting for Abrams to commit so that they can really get going. Well, that is hardly an enviable position to be in, exactly 13 months before the release of the film.

So it looks like while Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman are off making tons of over multi-million dollar sci-fi blockbusters, our favorite crew trekking across the stars will have to wait. We’ll be sure to be on this as close as we can while a confirmation comes through.